JANE STREET.
Mrs. Carpenter's patient face, as she sat by the window from morning till
night, and her restless busy hands, by degrees became a burden to Rotha.
"Mother," she said one day, when her own work for the time was done up
and she had leisure to make trouble,--"I do not like to see you doing
other people's sewing."
"It is my sewing," Mrs. Carpenter said.
"It oughtn't to be."
"I am very thankful to have it."
"It takes very little to make you thankful, seems to me. It makes _me_
feel angry."
"I am sorry for that."
"Well, if you would be angry, I wouldn't be; but you take it so quietly.
Mother, it's wrong!"
"What?"
"For you to be doing that work, which somebody else ought to do."
"If somebody else did it, somebody else would get the pay; and what would
become of us then?"
"I don't see what's to become of us now. Mother, you said I was to go to
school."
"Yes,"--and Mrs. Carpenter sighed here. "I have not had time yet to find
the right school for you."
"When will you find time? Mother, I think it was a great deal better at
Medwayville."
Mrs. Carpenter sighed again, her patient sigh, which aggravated Rotha.
"I don't like New York!" the latter went on, emphasizing every word.
"There is not one single thing here I do like."
"I am sorry, my child. It is not our choice that has brought us here."
"Couldn't our choice take us away again, mother?"
"I am afraid not."
Rotha looked on at the busy needle for a few minutes, and then burst out
again.
"I think things are queer! That you should be working so, and other
people have nothing to do."
"Hush, Rotha. Nobody in this world has nothing to do."
"Nothing they need do, then. You are better than they are."
"You speak foolishly. God gives everybody something to do, and his hands
full; and the work that God gives we need to do, Rotha. He has given me
this; and as long as he gives me his love with it, I think it is good. He
has given you your work too; and complaining is not a part of it. I hope
to send you to school, as soon as ever I can."
Before Rotha had got up her ammunition for another attack, there was a
tap at the door, and Mrs. Marble came in. She always seemed to bring life
with her.
"What do you get for that?" she asked, after she had chatted awhile,
watching her lodger. Mrs. Carpenter was making buttonholes.
"A shilling a dozen."
Mrs. Marble inspected the work.
"And how many can you make in that style in a day? I should like to
know."
"I cannot do this all day," said Mrs. Carpenter. "I get blind, and I get
nervous. I can make about two dozen and a half in five hours."
"Twenty five cents' worth: I declare!" said the little woman. "I wonder
if such folks will get to heaven?"
"What folks, Mrs. Marble?" enquired Rotha, to whom this saying sounded
doubtful.
"The folks that want to get so much for so little. They wouldn't be
satisfied with any heaven where they couldn't get a hundred per cent."
"The Lord gives more than that," said Mrs. Carpenter quietly. "A
hundredfold in this present world; and in the world to come, eternal
life."
"I never could get right hold of that doctrine," said Mrs. Marble. "Folks
talk about it,--but I never could find out it was much more than talk."
"Try it," said Mrs. Carpenter. "Then you'll know."
"Maybe I shall, if you stay with me long enough. I wisht I was rich, and
I'd do better for you than those buttonholes. I think I can do better
anyhow," said the little woman, brimming over with good will. "Ha' you
got no friends at all here?"
Mrs. Carpenter hesitated; and then said "no." "What schools are there in
this neighbourhood?" she asked then immediately.
"Schools? There's the public school, not far off."
"The public school? That is where everybody goes?"
"Everybody that aint rich, and some that be. I don't think they had ought
to. There's enough without 'em. Twelve hundred and fifty in this school."
"Twelve hundred and fifty children!"
"All that. Enough, aint it? But they say the teaching's first rate. You
want to send Rotha? You can't get along without her at home, can you? Not
unless you can get somethin' better than them buttonholes."
"Mother," said Rotha when Mrs. Marble had gone, "you wouldn't send me to
that school, would you? That's where all the poor children go. I don't
think anybody but poor people live all about here."
"Then it is a proper place for us. What are we but poor people, Rotha?"
"But mother, we were not poor people at Medwayville? And losing our farm
and our home and all, don't make any difference."
"Don't it?"
"No, mother, not in us. We are not that sort of people. You wouldn't send
me to such a school?"
"Take care, my child. 'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich;' and one is
not better than the other."
"One is better off than the other," said Rotha. "Mother, how comes aunt
Serena to be rich and you to be poor?"
Mrs. Carpenter hesitated and seemed to choose her words.
"It was because of the way she married," she answered at last. "I married
a poor man, and her marriage brought her into riches. I would not
exchange with her for all the world, Rotha. I have had much the best of
it. You see your judgment is not worth much."
Rotha was not satisfied by this statement, and as time wore on she
thought she had less and less reason. Mrs. Marble did succeed in finding
some different work with better pay for her lodger; that is, she got her
the private sewing of a family that paid her at the rate of seventy five
cents for a gentleman's shirt, with stitched linen bosom and cuffs. It
was better than the buttonhole making; yet even so, Mrs. Carpenter found
that very close and diligent application was necessary, if she would pay
her rent and pay her way. She could hardly do without Rotha's assistance.
If she tried, with natural motherly feeling, to spare her child, she made
her fingers rough and unfit for delicate work. It would not do. Rotha's
hands must go into the hot water, and handle the saucepan, and the broom,
and the box-iron. Ironing made Mrs. Carpenter's hands tremble; and she
must not be hindered in her work or made to do it slowly, if she and her
child were to live. And by degrees Rotha came thus to be very busy and
her days well filled up. All errands were done by her; purchases at the
market and the grocery shop and the thread and needle store. The care of
the two little rooms was hers; the preparation of meals, the clearing of
tables. It was better than to be idle, but Rotha sighed over it and Mrs.
Carpenter sometimes did the same. If she had known just what a public
school is, at all hazards she would not have kept her child at home;
Rotha should have had so much education as she could get there. But Mrs.
Carpenter had a vague horror of evil contact for her daughter, who had
lived until now in so pure an atmosphere bodily and mentally. Better
anything than such contact, she thought; and she had no time to examine
or make inquiries.
So days slipped by, as days do where people are overwhelmingly busy; the
hope and intention of making a change kept in the background and
virtually nullified by the daily and instant pressure. Rotha became
accustomed to the new part she was playing in life; and to her turn of
mind, there was a certain satisfaction in the activity of it. Mrs.
Carpenter sat by the window and sewed, from morning to night. Both of
them began to grow pale over their confined life; but they were caught in
the machinery of this great, restless, evil world, and must needs go on
with it; no extrication was possible. One needleful of thread after
another, one seam after another, one garment finished and another begun;
that was the routine of Mrs. Carpenter's life, as of so many others; and
Rotha found an incessant recurrence of meal-times, and of the necessary
arrangements before and after. The only break and change was on Sunday.
Mrs. Carpenter suddenly awoke to the conviction, that Rotha's going to
any sort of school was not a thing at present within the range of vision.
What was to be done? She thought a great deal about it.
On their way to and from church she had noticed a small bookstall, closed
then of course, which from its general appearance and its situation
promised a tariff of prices fitted for very shallow pockets. One
afternoon she resolutely laid down her work and took time to go and
inspect it. The stock was small enough, and poor; in the whole she found
nothing that could serve her purpose, save two volumes of a broken set of
Rollin's Ancient History. Being a broken set, the volumes were prized at
a mere trifle, and Mrs. Carpenter bought them. Rotha had been with her,
and as soon as they reached home subjected the purchase to a narrow and
thorough inspection.
"Mother, these are only Vol. I. and Vol. V."
"Yes, I know it."
"And they are not very clean."
"I know that too. I will cover them."
"And then, what are you going to do with them? Read them? You have no
time."
"I am going to make you read them."
"Well, I would like to read anything new," said Rotha; "but what shall we
do for all that goes between No. I. and No. V.?"
"We will see. Perhaps we can pick them up too, some time."
The reading, Rotha found, she was to do aloud, while her mother sewed. It
became a regular thing every afternoon, all the time there was to give to
it; and Rotha was not aware what schooling her mother managed to get out
of the reading. Mrs. Carpenter herself had been well educated; and so was
able to do for Rotha what was possible in the circumstances. It is
astonishing how much may be accomplished with small means, if there is
sufficient power of will at work. Not a fact and not a name in their
reading, but it was made the nucleus of a discussion, of which Rotha only
knew that it was very interesting; Mrs. Carpenter knew that she was
teaching her daughter history and chronology. Not the history merely of
the people immediately in question, but the history of the world and of
humanity. For without being a scholar or having dead languages at her
command, Mrs. Carpenter had another knowledge, which gives the very best
key to the solution of many human questions, leads to the most clear and
comprehensive view of the whole human drama of life and gives the only
one clue to guide one amidst the confusions of history and to its
ultimate goal and termination. Namely, the knowledge of the Bible. It is
marvellous, how that knowledge supplies and supplements other sorts. So
Rotha and her mother, at every step they made in their reading, stopped
to study the ground; looked back and forward, traced connections of
things, and without any parade of learning got deep into the philosophy
of them.
History was only one branch of the studies for which Rollin was made a
text-book. Mrs. Carpenter had an atlas in her possession; and she and
Rotha studied geography. Studied it thoroughly, too; traced and fixed the
relations of ancient and modern; learned by heart and not by head, which
is always the best way. And Mrs. Carpenter taxed her memory to enable her
as far as practicable to indoctrinate Rotha in the mysteries and delights
of physical geography, which the girl took as she would the details of a
story. Culture and the arts and industries came in for a share of
attention; but here Mrs. Carpenter's knowledge reached not far. Far
enough to excite Rotha's curiosity very much, which of itself was one
good thing. That indeed may be said to have been one general result and
fruit of this peculiar method of instruction.
A grammar was not among Mrs. Carpenter's few possessions, nor found on
the shelves of the book-stall above-mentioned. Here too she sought to
make memory supply the place of printed words. Rollin served as a text-
book again. Rotha learned the parts of speech, and their distinctions and
inflexions; also, as far as her mother could recollect them, the rules of
syntax. Against all this branch of study she revolted, as unintelligible.
Writing compositions went better; but for the mechanical part of this
exercise Mrs. Carpenter had no leisure. She did set Rotha a copy now and
then; but writing and arithmetic for the most part got the go-by. What
Mrs. Carpenter did she must do with her fingers plying the needle and her
eyes on her work.
It helped them both, all this learning and teaching; reading and talking.
It saved their life from being a dead monotony, and their minds from
vegetating; and diverted them from sorrowful regrets and recollections.
Life was quite active and stirring in the little rooms where they lived.
Nevertheless, their physical nature did not thrive so well as the mental.
Rotha was growing fast, and shooting up slender and pale, living too
housed a life; and her mother began to lose freshness and to grow thin
with too constant application. As the winter passed away, and warm
weather opened the buds of the trees which in some places graced the
city, these human plants seemed to wither more and more.
"O mother," said Rotha, standing at the window one day in the late
spring, "I think the city is just horrid!"
"Never mind, my child. We have a comfortable home, and a great deal to be
thankful for."
"If I could only see the butterflies in the fields again!" sighed Rotha.
Her mother echoed the sigh, but this time said nothing.
"And I would like a good big tumbler of real milk, and some strawberries,
and some of your bread and butter, mother."
"Yes, my child."
"Mother, how comes it that aunt Serena is rich, and you and I are so
poor?"
"You have asked me that before."
"But you didn't tell me."
"I told you, it was in consequence of the different marriages we made."
"Yes, I know. But you were not poor before you married father, were you?"
"No."
"Then that is what I mean. What is become of it? Where is your part?"
"Nowhere, dear."
"What became of it then, mother?"
"I never had it, Rotha. You had better get your book and read. That would
be wiser than asking useless questions."
"But why didn't you have it, mother? Did aunt Serena--did your sister--
get it all?"
"Get your book, Rotha."
"Mother, please tell me. I shall know the answer if you do not tell me."
"Your aunt had it all," Mrs. Carpenter said very quietly.
"Why?"
"Your grandfather thought there were good reasons."
"_Were_ there, mother?"
"I do not think so. But let it be, Rotha, and never mention this subject
to me again. Different people have different ways of looking at the same
thing; and people are often very honestly mistaken. You must not judge
others by yourself."
"Mother, I think that was very unjust," said Rotha, in immediate
disregard of this precept.
"You must not think it was meant so."
"But, mother, if a wrong thing is honestly meant, does that make it
right?"
"There is but one rule of right and wrong; it is God's rule."
"Then what difference does it make, whether it was 'honestly meant' or
no?"
"A good deal, I should say. Don't you think it does?"
"I do not believe aunt Serena means it honestly, though. If she was a
good woman, she wouldn't keep what belongs to you. She must _know_ it is
wrong!"
"Rotha, you are paining me," said Mrs. Carpenter, the tears springing to
her eyes. "This is very foolish talk, and very improper. Get your book."
"I don't wonder you don't want to go and see her!" said Rotha indignantly
as she obeyed the order. "O mother! if I could just once roll in the
grass again!"
At this moment came a cry from the street--
"Straw--berr_ees!_"
"What's that?" exclaimed Rotha springing to the window. "Mother, it's a
woman with a basket full of something red. Strawberries! it's
strawberries!"
The accent of this word went to the mother's heart.
"It's early yet," she said. "They will be very dear. By and by they will
be plenty and cheaper."
"Strawberries!" repeated Rotha, following the woman with her eyes.
"Mother, I think I do hate New York. The sight of those strawberries
makes me wild. I want Carlo, and the ducks, and my old pussy cat, and the
garden; and--Oh, I want father!"
The natural conclusion to this burst was a passion of weeping. Mrs.
Carpenter was fain to lay down her work, and put her arms round the
child, and shed some tears with her; though even as they fell she was
trying to soothe Rotha into patience and self-command. Two virtues of
which as yet the girl knew nothing, except that her mother was a very
lovely and constant exemplification of them. Nobody ever expected either
from Rotha; although this was the first violent expression of grief and
longing that her mother had seen since their removal to New York, and it
took her by surprise. Rotha had seemed to acquiesce with tolerable ease
in the new conditions of things; and this was Mrs. Carpenter's first
notification that under all the outside calm there lay a power of wish
and pain. They wept together for a while, the mother and child, which was
a sort of relief to both of them.
"Mother," said Rotha, as she dried her tears and struggled to prevent
more coming,--"I could bear it, only that I don't see any end to it."
"Well, my child? what then?" said the mother tenderly.
"I don't feel as if I could bear this always."
"There might be much worse, Rotha."
"That don't make this one bit better, mother. It makes it harder."
"We must trust God."
"For what? I don't see."
"Trust him, that he will keep his promises. I do."
"What promises?"
"He has said, that none of them that trust in him shall be desolate."
"But 'not desolate'! That is not enough," said. Rotha. "I want more than
that. I want to be happy; and I want to be comfortable."
"Are you not comfortable, my child?"
"No, mother," Rotha said with a sob.
"What do you want?" Mrs. Carpenter spoke with a gentle soft accent, which
half soothed, half reproached Rotha, though she did not mean any
reproach. Rotha, nevertheless went on.
"I want nearly everything, mother! everything that we haven't got."
"It would not make you happy, if you had it."
"Why not? Why wouldn't it?"
"Because nothing of that sort can. There is only one thing that makes
people happy."
"I know; you mean religion. But I am not religious. And if I _was_ happy,
mother, I should want those other things too."
"If you were happy--you would be happy," Mrs. Carpenter said with a
slight smile.
"That would not hinder my wanting other things. I should want, as I do
now, nice dresses, and a nice house, and books, and not to have to cook
and wash dishes, and to take a ride sometimes and a walk sometimes--not a
walk to market--I want all that, mother."
"I would give it you if I could, Rotha. If I had it and did not give it
to you, you would know that I had some very good reason."
"I might think you were mistaken," said Rotha.
"We cannot think that of the only wise God," Mrs. Carpenter said with
that same faint, sweet smile again; "so we must fall back upon the
other alternative."
Rotha was silenced.
"We know that he loves us, dear; and 'they that trust in the Lord shall
not want any good thing.' As soon as it would be good for us, if that
time ever comes, we shall have it. As for me, if you were only one of
those that trust in him, I should hardly have a wish left."
Rotha dried her tears and went at her work. But the summer, as the days
passed, was a trial to both of them. Accustomed to sweet country air and
free motion about the farm, the closeness, the heat, the impurities, and
the confinement of the city were extremely hard to bear. They made it
also very difficult to work. Often it seemed to Mrs. Carpenter, unused to
such a sedentary life and close bending over her needle, that she must
stop and wait till it grew cooler, or till she herself felt a little
refreshed. But the necessities of living drove her on, as they drive so
many, pitilessly. She could not intermit her work. Rents were due just
the same in summer as in winter, and meat and bread were no cheaper. She
grew very thin and pale; and Rotha too, though in a far less degree,
shewed the wilting and withering effect of the life they led. Rarely a
walk could be had; the streets were hot and disagreeable; and Mrs.
Carpenter could but now and then dare to spend twenty cents for car hire
to take her and Rotha to the Park and back again. The heats of July were
very hard to bear; the heats of August were more oppressive still; and
when September came with its enervating moist, muggy, warm days, Mrs.
Carpenter could scarcely keep her place and her work at her window. All
day she could not. She was obliged to stop and lie by. Appetite failed,
meals were not enticing; and on the whole, Mrs. Marble was not at all
satisfied with the condition of either of her lodgers.
The cooler weather and then the frosts wrought some amendment. Yet all
the autumn did not put them back where the spring had found them; and
late in November Mrs. Carpenter took a cold which she could not
immediately get rid of. A bad cough set in; strength rather failed than
grew; and the thin hands which were so unceasingly busy with their work,
became more and more transparently thin. Mrs. Carpenter needed rest; she
knew it; and the thought came to her that it might be duty, and even it
might be necessity, to apply to her sister for help. Surely it could not
be refused?
She was often busy with this thought.
One day she had undertaken a longer walk than usual, to carry home some
articles of fine sewing that she had finished. She would not send Rotha
so far alone, but she took her along for company and for the air and
exercise. Her way led her into the finer built part of the city. Coming
down Broadway, she was stopped a minute by a little crowd on the
sidewalk, just as a carriage drew up and a lady with a young girl stepped
out of it and went into Tiffany's; crossing the path of Mrs. Carpenter
and Rotha. The lady she recognized as her own sister.
"Mother," said Rotha, as they presently went on their way again, "isn't
that a handsome carriage?"
"Very."
"What is the coachman dressed so for?"
"That is what they call a livery."
"Well, what _is_ it? He has top boots and a gold band round his hat. What
for? I see a great many coachmen and footmen dressed up so or some other
way. What is the use of it?"
"No use, that I know."
"Then what is it for?"
"I suppose they think it looks well."
"So it does. But how rich people must be, mother, when their servants can
dress handsomer than we ever could. And their own dresses! Did you see
the train of that lady's dress?"
"Yes."
"Beautiful black silk, ever so much of it, sweeping over the sidewalk.
She did not even lift it up, as if she cared whether it went into the
dirt or not."
"I suppose she did not care," said Mrs. Carpenter mechanically, like a
person who is not giving much thought to her answers.
"Then she must be _very_ rich indeed. I suppose, mother, her train would
make you a whole nice dress."
"Hardly so much of it as that," said Mrs. Carpenter.
"No, no; I mean the cost of it. Mother, I wonder if it is _right_, for
that woman to trail so much silk on the ground, and you not to be able to
get yourself one good dress?"
"It makes no difference in my finances, whether she trails it or not."
"No, but it ought."
"How should it?"
Rotha worked awhile at this problem in silence.
"Mother, if nobody used what he didn't want, don't you think there would
be enough for the people who do want? You know what I mean?"
"I know what you mean. But how should the surplus get to the people who
want it?"
"Why!--that's very simple."
"Not so simple as you think."
"Mother, that is the way people did in the second chapter of Acts, that
we were reading yesterday. Nobody said that anything he had was his own."
"That was when everybody was full of the love of Christ. I grant you,
Rotha, that makes things easy. My child, let us take care we act on that
principle."
"We have nothing to give," said Rotha. "Mother, how that girl was dressed
too, that came out of that same carriage. Did you see her?"
"Hardly."
"She was about as old as I am, I guess. Mother, she had a feather in her
hat and a beautiful little muff, and a silk frock too, though there was
no train to it. Her silk was red--dark red," Rotha added with a sigh.
Mrs. Carpenter had been struck and moved, as well as her daughter, by the
appearance of the figures in question, though, as she said, she had
scarce seen more than one of them. But her thoughts were in a different
channel.
When she got home, contrary to all her wont, Mrs. Carpenter sat down and
put her head in her hands, instead of going to work. She said she was a
little tired, which was very true; but the real reason was a depression
and at the same time a perturbation of mind which would not let her work.
She had been several times lately engaged with the thought, that it might
be better, that it might be her duty, to make herself known to her
sister. She felt that her strength lately had been decreasing; it had
been with much difficulty that she accomplished her full tale of work;
help, even a little, would be very grateful, and a friend for Rotha might
be of the greatest importance. It was over with those thoughts. That one
glimpse of her sister as she swept past, had shewn her the utter futility
of such an appeal as she had thought of making. There was something in
the whole air and style of the rich woman which convinced Mrs. Carpenter
that she would not patiently hear of poor relations in her neighbourhood;
and that help given, even if she gave it, would be so given that it would
be easier to do without it than to accept it. She was thrown back upon
herself; and the check and the disappointment shewed how much, secretly
she had been staying herself upon this hope which had failed her.
She said nothing to her daughter, and Rotha never knew what that
encounter had been. But a few days later, finding herself still not
gaining strength, and catching at any thread of hope or help, Mrs.
Carpenter took another long walk and delivered at its place of address
the letter which her English guest had left her. She hardly expected ever
to hear anything from it again; and in fact it was long before she did
hear either of the letter or of its writer.
The months of winter went somewhat painfully along. Mrs. Carpenter's
health did not mend, and the constant sewing became more and more
difficult to bear. Mrs. Carpenter now more frequently went out with her
work herself; leaving Rotha to make up the lost time by doing some of the
plainer seams, for which she was quite competent.